Woman killed in sus­pected tiger at­tack in Maha

NAGPUR:A woman farm labourer was mauled to death by a wild an­i­mal, sus­pected to be a tiger or leop­ard, at a for­est in Ma­ha­rash­tra’s Chan­dra­pur district, po­lice said Satur­day.

Sakhubai Kas­ture, 55, a res­i­dent of Pendhri vil­lage in Chan­dra­pur, lo­cated around 160 km from Nagpur, had gone to work at a farm in the for­est on Fri­day, an official at Pa­tri po­lice sta­tion said. When she did not re­turn home till late night, villagers launched a search and spot­ted her body in a for­est area in Sawali tehsil on Satur­day early morn­ing, he said.

There were in­juries and an­i­mal marks on the body and some blood clots were also found on her clothes, he said.

Pug marks of tiger and leop­ard were also no­ticed near the body, he said, adding that po­lice and for­est of­fi­cials vis­ited the spot and were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent.

Tigers and leop­ards are of­ten spot­ted in the for­est area, he said.no­tably, a ti­gress named Avni, who was be­lieved to have turned man-eater and killed 13 peo­ple in the last two years in Ya­vat­mal district’s Pand­harkawda area, was shot dead in the Bo­rati for­est there last week.

The killing led to out­rage among an­i­mal lovers and wildlife or­gan­i­sa­tions.